Racine, Jean

(1639-1699)

   dramatist

   Considered the greatest writer of French classical tragedy, Jean Racine was born in La Ferté-Milon, the son of a tax official. orphaned at an early age, he was raised and educated at the Jansenist convent of Port-Royal, where his aunt was a nun. Rigorously moralistic and intellectual, Racine accepted Jansenism as one of the strongest influences in his life, but he was also influenced by the Greek (Sophocles, Euripides) and later classics that he had studied and could read fluently. Failing to gain an ecclesiastical benefice in the provinces, Racine returned to Paris (1663) and became friends with important literary figures, including jean de la fontaine. In 1664, he produced his first play, Thébaïde, followed by Alexandre (1665), and began a decade-long period that was the most productive of his career, with Andromaque (1667), Les Plaideurs (1668), Britannicus (1669), Bérénice (1670), Bajazet (1672), Mithridate (1673), Iphigénie (1674), and Phèdre (1677). After Alexandre, all his works were produced by the company of players of the Hôtel de Bourgogne and, with Andromaque, Racine replaced pierre corneille as the favorite of the young king louis XIV and his court. Very much a figure of the court himself, Racine had several noted liaisons with actresses and was known for a stormy, tormented, and jealous nature. Except for his one comedy, Les Plaideurs, a satire on the Parisian language of his day, all of Racine's works deal with the heroic figures of antiquity, with their words and emotions adapted to 17th-century France. At the request of Mme de maintenon, Racine wrote his last dramatic works, the biblical tragedies Ester (1689) and Athalie (1691), for the young girls at her school at saint-cyr. In 1672, at the height of his success, Racine was elected to the Académie Française and devoted most of his time to writing official history, including Louis XlV's military campaigns. He also wrote religious works, Cantiques spirituels (1694) and a history, Abrégé de l'histoire de Port-Royal (posthumous, 1767). Regarded as the supreme exponent of French classical poetry in rhymed Alexandrian verse, his most famous tragedies became integral to the repertory of the comédie-française, and the interpretations of his characters have been standard tests for French actors. Although Racine's dramas are based on intense human passions, they follow a strict neoclassical formality, with restrained actions and emotions.